


Ashes

by Valinde (Valyria)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Dean, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Community: spnkink_meme, Demon Dean Winchester, Episode: s09e23 Do You Believe in Miracles?, Fallen Castiel, Knotting, M/M, Mark of Cain, Mating, Non-Consensual, Not Beta Read, Omega Castiel, Post-Episode: s09e23 Do You Believe In Miracles?, Prompt Fic, Spoilers, dean is sort of dead in this?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:56:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1735325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valyria/pseuds/Valinde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is dead, but he's not gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Destiel ABO 9.23 coda written for this [prompt](http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/85765.html?thread=32773637#t32773637) on the kinkmeme.

Castiel ignores the blinking icon on his phone for several hours, but eventually, sitting alone in Metatron’s office, he forces himself to listen to the messages Sam has left him.

There are seven.

The moment he hears how hoarse Sam’s voice is, how he is struggling to speak, the tiny flicker of hope he’d been nursing is snuffed out and his heart is left cold.

_“Cas please, as soon as you get this, call me. It’s Dean.”_

Castiel stares at his phone for a moment and then flicks to the second voicemail.

 _“Cas. I don’t know what happened - if you and Gadreel even made it... but it’s **Dean**  Cas. Metatron… he stabbed him.”_ The recording is static for a long moment, as if Sam needed a moment to gather himself.  _“You gotta come, bring one of the angels, you have to fix him…”_

The next message is from almost three hours later. Sam sounds very tired. He is not crying anymore.  _“I took him home, we’re at the bunker. Fuck. Cas I need your help, Dean needs your help.”_

There is a gap of 42 minutes until the next message and Sam’s calm is gone again, his voice raw and distraught once more.  _“Please Cas you have to hurry, I don’t know what to do!”_

The next was recorded only 11 minutes later.  _“He’s dead Cas! My **brother**  is lying there **dead**. Where are you!? If you’re… I can’t do this alone Cas, I need you.”_

Sam’s voice is nothing like Dean’s, but his words, that pain behind them, that is painfully familiar. There is nothing Castiel can do for Dean. He has failed him. He has no grace to heal his body, and even if he had another angel perform the act, he has been dead too long now. The veil between the worlds is still obscured by Metatron’s foul magic. Dean’s soul is not anywhere any angel could reach.

He is trapped between the worlds where even reapers cannot touch him. Castiel cannot fix this. All he can do is get Metatron to reverse the spell, release Dean and all the others who have died since the fall from the void and off to the rest they deserve.

But he  _can_  help Sam. He has been selfish, remaining in heaven while his friend suffers through his grief alone. He ignored Dean’s prayers, he will not ignore his brother’s. He puts his phone in his pocket, not bothering to play the last messages and leaves Heaven.

The drive to Lebanon, Kansas, takes several hours, far longer than it seemed to take with Gadreel beside him. Castiel feels numb the entire time. His stolen grace smolders painfully in his chest, feels like iron bars crushing his heart. The Impala is out the front of the bunker, parked unevenly, one door still hanging open. As Castiel walks past he sees the drying blood staining the upholstery. Dean would be upset at that. He tries not to think too hard, to think of anything.

The bunker is unlocked. Castiel is able to walk straight in.

Sam is in the library, sleeping on his folded arms, an empty bottle at his elbow. Castiel can smell the whiskey from across the room. It is almost strong enough to mask Sam’s scent. His familiar musk, one that had been comforting when Castiel had been human is now sharp with his pain and makes his nose wrinkle.  _Alpha-in-mourning._  Sam has lost his brother. Castiel stares for a long moment then crosses to stand at his friend’s side. His grace flickers, lashes out at him from within with fiery barbs and snarls, but Castiel presses his hand to Sam’s head and is able to give him the comfort of dreamless sleep at least.

Even that small act of grace drains him. Castiel staggers away from Sam and gathers himself. Cool sweat pricks across his brow. He can feel his grace thrashing, trying to escape. He won’t have the strength to contain it for much longer. The prospect doesn’t frighten him as it once might have. He is tired. He regrets that Sam will be left alone, but he no longer has the will to keep fighting. He is sick of hurting, sick of the ache in his chest. Now that Dean is gone he feels the enormity of his existence pressing down upon him, his connection to humanity slipping even though his ties to his own kin are long burned away. There is no home, no place left for him. Even this place feels strange to him and he had once been all he longed for.

Around him the bunker is still and silent save for Sam’s breathy snores. It feels different to how it had the last time Castiel stood within it though only a day has passed. The box that contained the first blade is still sitting where Sam left it at the other end of the table. Crowley’s sulfur stink lingers in the air and Gadreel’s dried blood is dried dark and tacking on the floor, the metallic scent adding to the oppressive atmosphere.  Castiel turns and looks down the corridor that leads to Dean and Sam’s bedrooms.

Sam’s door is shut but Dean’s is ajar, the dark sliver of shadow calling out to him.

He is in there. Somehow Castiel knows, and it has nothing to do with grace or angelic divination. His friend is in that room and he is dead.

His feet carry him down the dark hallway on automatic, even though suddenly Castiel doesn’t want enter that room, doesn’t want to see the ruin of Dean laid out before him, cold and dead and small. The undeniable proof of his failure to save even  _one_  where he once thought he could save all. Is this is punishment for his hubris? To live long enough to see all his attempts to do good end in pain and suffering?

As he approaches the door his skin starts to crawl. The scent of blood and sulfur grows thick in the air.  _The Mark,_ Castiel remembers and anguish washes over him anew. The demonic taint of it is heavy in the air. Foolishly Castiel had not considered its influence. Is Dean to be denied even the release of a clean death? Has the mark twisted his soul? Tainted his last sacrifice? The thought of Dean’s soul trapped in the nether is painful enough, to think of him  _damned_ is raw agony.

Castiel pushes open the door and steps through, needing to know one way or the other.

The bed is bloodstained and the room smells of death, but there is no corpse upon it. There is a corpse in the room however, it’s just that it’s standing and staring at Castiel with black eyes instead of laying still.

“Dean,” Castiel says, feeling something crumple within him, heartbroken.  _“No.”_

Crowley materializes beside the thing wearing Dean and looks over Castiel with interest. “Well now, this  _is_  a surprise,” he says. “I would’ve thought you’d be worm food by now Cas.” He squints and Castiel can only barely make out the hideous shape of his horned and blackened true form as he looks  _into_ Castiel. “Barely an angel at all anymore are you?” He steps forward curiously, sniffing the air, blocking Castiel’s view of Dean.

 _“Crowley,”_  Castiel spits, uncertain if he has ever hated anyone as much as he hates the demon in that moment.

He just smirks and opens his mouth to know doubt make one of his ‘witty’ little comments, but freezes when a loud growl echoes through the room instead. His eyes widen almost comically and he turns to face Dean. His lips are pulled back into a snarl that Castiel knows would never grace Dean’s face if he was breathing. He is completely still, every ounce of dark intent focused upon Castiel. Suddenly, Castiel is afraid not just for Dean’s soul, but for himself.

Unconsciously, he finds himself shrinking backward. Dean matches each step, edging closer, still growling lowly. His face is bruised, cut and swollen. His shirt is soaked in blood. Metatron beat him before him killed him. Castiel’s fear wars with anger and pity. Dean does not deserve this fate.

“What’s the matter champ?” Crowley asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet like he finds the entire horrifying mess amusing. “Want the angel yourself?”

Dean ignores his words and stalks forward. His scent flares in the air. Once it brought Castiel comfort, made him think of family and friendship and love - all the best parts of humanity - now it is rank. Charred and rotten. But it seems to press down on him, hold him in some sort of thrall. Castiel cannot move.

Dean stops right in front of him. Closer than Dean ever stands, close enough for Castiel to make out the freckles dusted across his nose and cheeks, more prominent than usual with how translucent his skin his. His lips are blue. Castiel stares at them. Better to stares at Dean’s blood-stained teeth than his black eyes. His eyes sting with the sulfur stink of him and something else. The grace buried his chest flares up and scalds his insides and suddenly Castiel  _sees_ Dean, sees his tortured soul chained in the prison of his own decaying flesh. He felts hot water on his cheeks.

It is worse, much worse than when he had found Dean in the Pit so long ago. The Mark,  _Lucifer’s Mark,_  is branded hot and glowing onto what once was Dean Winchester’s soul. It is not so much the blood red flames that dance around his brow, or the great curved horns, the claws and the teeth, no it is the heart of him that makes Castiel ache with futile misery. Dean’s soul - the glorious light of it, the golden light of the Righteous Ma - is gone, snuffed out, charred into black soot and sulfur. No hint of it remains, no dim flicker.

Gone.

Castiel’s human heart clenches painfully in his chest even as his grace screams at him, furious at being so close to the demonic, itching to strike out and smite the blight before it from the face of the Earth. If he had the strength, perhaps he would. Dean, the real Dean, would beg him to, he knows it.

But he cannot even offer that mercy. Another failure to add to the list. “Dean,” he says, meeting those black eyes and forcing himself not to recoil in horror. “Oh Dean I’m sorry.”

Dean’s head tilts and his eyes narrow. “I’m not,” he says and the sound of his voice dark and strange sends cold dread shooting up Castiel’s spine anew.

 _This is not Dean_  he realizes, finally, completely. It is a monster molded from his clay, but it is not him. He is dead. Truly dead. Taken from Castiel, from Sam, in the worst way imaginable. It is so… so incredibly unfair. What has Dean done to deserve such a fate?

Cold fingers slide across Castiel’s cheeks, the soft skin beneath his vessel’s eyes. When he withdraws them, Dean rubs his fingertips together curiously. “Salt,” he says. “Huh. Stings.” But he must enjoy that small discomfort because he immediately replaces his fingers with his tongue, laps the moisture from Castiel’s face. Castiel closes his eyes, repulsed. “You taste good Cas,” Dean tells him, low and amused. “But then I always figured you would.” He shoves his clammy face against Castiel’s neck and scents him with a deep slow inhale. “You always smelled so good. Never was one for omegas, but damn Cas, you’ve always been the exception to the rule and all that.”

His scent has grown even thicker, seems to have latched onto Castiel in some primitive fundamental way. He moves closer, plastering himself to Castiel, one hand digging into his hip, the other tight across the back of his neck. Castiel feels Dean’s erection bump against his stomach and shies away from it in shock, but Dean just yanks him closer, rubs up against him shamelessly. “Wanted to shove you face down in the dirt and fuck you stupid the moment I laid eyes on you. Knot you up, fuck you full.”

Dean would never say such things, never even mentions the fact that Castiel’s vessel is an omega. Castiel is horrified, but he feels something warm flare low in his belly, something he has only felt on a few rare occasions when he has been very close to fallen or human entirely. Something he has only felt when Dean has looked at him in a certain way.

Dean scents the air and laps at the skin of his neck, “Mmm that’s right angel,” he purrs, amused. “I can smell how bad you want it.”

“Oh so it’s like that is it?” Crowley asks, leering.

Dean’s head snaps up and he snarls at the other demon. Crowley raises his hands and takes a step back, “Chill out big boy. I’m not gonna take away your little chew toy there. He’s all yours.”

“Get out,” Dean snaps.

Crowley smirks and throws Castiel a wink. “Have fun lovebirds!” he says and then he’s gone.

Instantly Dean’s attention is back upon Castiel. He doesn’t waste any time. He tears at his clothes, cotton splitting and buttons flying everywhere. Castiel pushes at him, tries to bat him away, “Dean. Dean stop this.”

“No,” Dean growls. “Not gonna stop, gonna make you mine Cas, like I shoulda done years ago.”

Castiel tries to wriggle out of his hold, but Dean spins him and then his teeth are digging into the back of his neck. Castiel feels himself go limp, he tries to move, but the feel of Dean’s teeth sharp and painful there behind him combined with the thick scent of  _alpha_ pouring off his skin - no matter the sulfur stink - seems to hold some deep sway over him. He flounders within himself, trying to gather what remains of his grace, but it slips from him, elusive and sharp. All that’s left of it is a little sullen coal burning away at him from the inside, of no use to him at all.

He tries to push Dean away with just the human strength of his vessel, but Dean is like rock, immoveable. He growls in low warning against Castiel’s neck, grabbing at his arms and restraining him effortlessly.

He shoves Castiel against the nearest wall, hard enough that his head rings and his teeth cut the inside of his mouth. There is no distance between Castiel and his vessel. His blood doesn’t taste of molecules, it tastes like salt, like a rusty copper coin. Dean lifts his mouth from Castiel’s neck but the bite he has left there throbs in time with Castiel’s racing heart and it still feels like his teeth are there, digging in. He yanks at Castiel’s pants, not even bothering with the belt or fly. They scrape painfully at the skin of his thighs and the shock is enough to get Castiel thrashing again, bucking and trying to throw Dean off, but it’s no use. Dean catches his wrists up in one large hand, the small bones in Castiel’s wrists grinding together painfully, and slams them to the wall above his head.

His teeth dig into the meat of Castiel’s shoulder, drawing blood and marking him anew, and then two thick fingers are shoved inside him. He’s wet, his body has been responding despite his horror at the situation, but it still hurts. Dean is not gentle and like this, mostly fallen, slave to the human drives of his omega vessel, Castiel suddenly realizes how  _weak_ he is. Perversely, Dean’s strength seems to  _excite_ the mindless part of him that wants to mate and doesn’t care how wrong any of this is.

Dean removes his fingers and abruptly replaces them with his cock. It burns, the blunt, wet, head of it stretching Castiel and splitting him open. He screams in agony, in anger, in misery and Dean groans in satisfaction, hips pressing in relentlessly. He feels huge, like more than Castiel could ever manage before he’s even half-way in. It feels like he tearing Castiel apart, breaking him. The rough jerks as he works himself in fully destroys what little fight remained in Castiel. He cries, sobbing brokenly as Dean growls and snarls behind him, vicious and exultant. He gives up, stops trying to control his body.

Dean smothers him, humps him roughly against the wall. “Fuck Cas,” he says, breath fetid with smoke and char and death. “So fucking tight. So fucking good. Even better than I thought.”

Castiel hates that part of him delights in the praise. The part of him that had him standing so close to Dean when he first raised him, the part of him that stood silent and invisible and watched as Dean fucked his barmaids and waitresses, the part of him that wondered what it would be like to be human, to be  _Dean’s_  in all ways. He’d had dreams, when he was human, about Dean inside him like this, Dean claiming him.

“You’re mine, you’re  _mine!_ ” Dean hisses, like he’s reading Castiel mind. “You’re my omega. My bitch. My own little angel-whore.”

Castiel feels himself flutter around the aching stretch buried inside him, feels the wet drip of his vessel’s arousal and his cheeks flush in shame.

“Yeah you like that,” Dean pants, delighted, sniffing at the air. “Like my dick up your ass. Made for it.  _Fuck_.” His hands wrap around Castiel’s hips and he straightens forcing Castiel up onto his toes. He sinks even deeper, so deep Castiel thinks if he put a hand on his stomach maybe he’d feel him there. It’s agony, but it stokes some mad desperation in him, has him whining in the back of his throat.

“Fuck,” Dean hisses, grinding his hips in rough little jerks. “Could fucking hang you off my knot.” He walks backwards to the bed and Castiel ends up grabbing onto his shoulders and awkwardly wrapping his legs around his thighs to take some of his weight because he’s doing just that, hanging impaled on Dean’s cock.

Dean’ shoves him off, presses him face down on the bed. It smells of blood and washing detergent. Of Dean’s stolen humanity. The last of Castiel’s clothes are torn away and then he’s completely naked. He feels tiny, frail. His vessel is much smaller than Dean’s without the bulk of his clothes. Dean’s hands where he touches him are large and strong, so strong. The bites on his neck sting and his ass throbs painfully.

Dean grabs at his thighs, hauling him up, and then he’s slamming back inside. Castiel wails at the thick intrusion, scrambles beneath him, pulling at the covers and the pillows. Dean laughs and shoves him down with a hand between his shoulder blades, pinning him down entirely.

Castiel can’t move, is pressed down so hard the mattress and blanket are nearly suffocating him. Dean doesn't relent though, just starts fucking into him deep and hard, owning him. Castiel struggles to breathe but each breath is thick with the stale scent of the  _real_  Dean, the man with the bright soul who slept in this bed, the hunter who carefully arranged the guns and knives hanging on the walls, who left a picture of his mother on the bedside table, who sat here and prayed to Castiel and was ignored.

“Cas,” Dean groans, “So tight, so good.”

Blood is rushing in Castiel’s ear and that is  _Dean’s_  voice and  _Dean_  he smells thick in the sheets he is panting into and that is  _Dean_ slamming into him, filling him up. His dick throbs where it hangs hot and heavy between his thighs. “Dean,” he says.

Dean grunts and slides his hand from Castiel’s back to his neck, squeezing, then snaps his hips forward violently, ripping a scream from Castiel’s throat. His voice is mocking. “Yeah fucking  _take it_   _Castiel_. Take it like the whining little bitch you are.”

Castiel sobs into the sheets, tries to ignore the words, to drum them out. Dean doesn’t stop though.

“You like that angel?” he asks. “Like my cock in that greedy hole of yours?” He grinds deeply for a moment, emphasizing his words. “Want my knot?”

Castiel’s shoulders shake with his sobbing but he can’t help it, he nods, head jerking against the covers of Dean’s bed.

“Say it,” Dean demands. “Tell me you want it.”

He has to swallow, gather himself before he can speak. “Want it,” he manages to croak, utterly defeated.

Dean’s voice is teasing, cruel. “What do you want Cas? Gonna have to be more specific”

“Want  _you_  Dean.”

The demon doesn’t reply, because that isn’t really the answer it was looking for. Castiel may not be experienced in matters of human sexuality, but he is aware that Dean was prompting Castiel to beg to be fucked, or knotted, something base and demeaning.

“Wanted you so long Dean,” Cas tells him, rolling his hips and rubbing his face in the comforting scent of  _his_ Dean, the one that’s gone. Maybe there’s some part of him in there, some charred remnant. Castiel lets himself pretend. “Do it,” he begs. “Make me yours…”

Dean groans, hips working frantically and Castiel feels it, the thickening bulge of his knot as it pulls back and forth over his rim. The hot ache of it has him wailing and thrashing, simultaneously hungry for more and hating every second. And then it catches, swells up fat and hot inside him and Castiel feels Dean’s seed spill in a wet rush right as his teeth sink into his neck once more, hard enough to drawn blood. His own dick pulses and he comes in a shuddery mess against the sheets.

For a minute he lies there, aching but sated, everything fogged and peaceful in his mind. Then Dean shifts and the sharp scent of sulfur assails Castiel as his knot pulls painfully on his ass.

“Mmm,” Dean says, smugly pleased. He fingers at the wet skin of Castiel’s ass where it’s stretched tight around the base of his cock. He leans in close, scents up along Castiel’s neck, makes him shudder with revulsion. “Mine now Cas, got you right where you belong.” His breath is stinks of corruption and smoke. Castiel turns his head away and Dean nips at the line of his neck. “My little angel-bitch,” he says fondly, rolling his hips, making Castiel squirm and moan uncomfortable. “Never gonna let you go.”

Castiel turns his head, presses his nose to the mattress and inhales deeply, but the scent of the real Dean is already fading and behind him the demon laughs.


End file.
